are anything
but stupid."

"What does Winthrop do with himself? Rufus isn't so busy."

"I don't know," said Elizabeth; "and I am sure I don't care.
He goes for eels, I think, every other night. He has been
after them to-night. He is always after birds or fish or
rabbits, when he isn't on the farm."

"I wonder what people find so much to do on a farm. I should
think they'd grow stupid. -- It is funny," said Miss
Cadwallader as she got into bed, "how people in the country
always think you must read the Bible."

Elizabeth lay a little while thinking about it and then fell
asleep. She had slept, by the mind's unconscious measurement,
a good while, when she awoke again. It startled her to see
that a light came flickering through the cracks of her door
from the kitchen. She slipped out of bed and softly and
quickly lifted the latch. But it was not the house on fire.
The light came from Mrs. Landholm's candle dying in its
socket; beyond the candle, on the hearth, was the mistress of
the house on her knees. Elizabeth would have doubted even then
what she was about, but for the soft whisper of words which
came to her ear. She shut the door as softly and quickly
again, and got into bed with a kind of awe upon her. She had
certainly heard people stand up in the pulpit and make
prayers, and it seemed suitable that other people should bend
upon cushions and bow heads while they did so; but that in a
common-roofed house, on no particular occasion, anybody should
kneel down to pray when he was alone and for his own sake, was
something that had never come under her knowledge; and it gave
her a disagreeable sort of shock. She lay awake and watched to
see how soon Mrs. Landholm's light would go away; it died, the
faint moonlight stole in through the window unhindered; and
still there was no stir in the next room. Elizabeth watched
and wondered; till after a long half hour she heard a light
step in the kitchen and then a very light fall of the latch.
She sprang up to look at the moon; it had but little risen;
she calculated the time of its rising for several nights back,
and made up her mind that it must be long past twelve. And
this a woman who was tired every day with her day's work and
had been particularly tired to-night! for Elizabeth had
noticed it. It made her uncomfortable. Why should _she_ spend
her tired minutes in praying, after the whole house was
asleep? and why was it that Elizabeth could not set her down
as a foo